It's too cheap a shot to take at our neighbors to the north about the way the folks at Texas Presbyterian Hospital handled the patient with Ebola who went there and was sent home with antibiotics. After all, international flights from western Africa arrive daily in Houston. And Atlanta, and Miami, and New York and Los Angeles and Chicago.
Overburdened first-line healthcare specialists in the emergency room are responsible for maximizing profit in equivalent measure to the suits in the executive office, no matter which American city's hospitals we speak of.
It is not, on the other hand, unfair to point out that there are lots of people without health insurance who do not see a doctor until they are wildly ill, because their state's leaders refuse to extend them even the most nominal healthcare coverage.
Do we turn away poor folks with Ebola because they don't have insurance? Of course we don't... because they might infect the children whose parents do have health coverage. When a third-world problem becomes a first-world problem, then everybody gets excited.
There might be a better way to stop the spread of a contagion than knee-jerk panic reactions. But that would require planning, and thought, and then taking the proper action.
Not to mention some measure of compassion for those less fortunate.
If there's one thing I know for absolute certain, those are not qualities possessed by the majority of the current leadership of Texas. And the other certainty is that our once-every-two-or-four-years opportunity to change that is coming up quickly on the calendar.
Overburdened first-line healthcare specialists in the emergency room are responsible for maximizing profit in equivalent measure to the suits in the executive office, no matter which American city's hospitals we speak of.
It is not, on the other hand, unfair to point out that there are lots of people without health insurance who do not see a doctor until they are wildly ill, because their state's leaders refuse to extend them even the most nominal healthcare coverage.
Do we turn away poor folks with Ebola because they don't have insurance? Of course we don't... because they might infect the children whose parents do have health coverage. When a third-world problem becomes a first-world problem, then everybody gets excited.
There might be a better way to stop the spread of a contagion than knee-jerk panic reactions. But that would require planning, and thought, and then taking the proper action.
Not to mention some measure of compassion for those less fortunate.
If there's one thing I know for absolute certain, those are not qualities possessed by the majority of the current leadership of Texas. And the other certainty is that our once-every-two-or-four-years opportunity to change that is coming up quickly on the calendar.
